Verstehende Soziologie Research Articles

How is Sociological Knowledge Possible? Influences of Kantian Epistemology in Max Weber’s ‘Verstehende Soziologie’ and the Problem of Objectivity

Kant’s ‘Copernican Revolution’ has caused a radical change in the common-sense theory of knowledge. The subject became the centre and the necessary premise for the validity of the objective world. This change in the understanding of knowledge has best manifested itself in Weber’s ‘Verstehende Soziologie’. Therefore, in order to understand the Weberian sociological method and to be able to detect the possible problems that may arise from his sociology, a better grasp of what Kantian epistemology is and in what ways it has influenced Weberian sociology is needed. Accordingly, this paper will firstly analyse Kantian epistemology with a special emphasis on transcendental idealism, and will expand and explain in detail Weber’s ‘Verstehende Soziologie’. Next, the paper will show how Weberian sociology relates to Kantian epistemology through the construction of ideal types. Before concluding, the focus moves to the objectivity claim of both Kantian epistemology and Weberian sociology and shows how objectivity arises from subjectivity through the establishment of causality. Finally, the paper will propose an objection to the objectivity claim of Weberian sociology and will argue that Kantian epistemology, when adopted as a method of sociology, becomes reflexive and threatens to deprive sociology of its objectivity claim.

Zur Logik und Methodik der Sozialwissenschaften. Schriften 1900-1907 by Max Weber (review)

268 Max Weber Studies© Max Weber Studies 2019. dissatisfaction with the Association, the motives for his early and intensive engagement in the GSS, and the reasons for his disenchantment after only two years. Weiß’s elaborate reconstruction of the genesis and substance of the older and newer parts of the ‘Kategorien’ essay, much of it included in his introduction (60-77), is a provocative exercise in Weberian exegesis that will repay careful scrutiny. Finally, there is a larger question. Weiß acknowledges that from the time of his early professorship in economics and finance at Freiburg until his death, Weber saw himself predominantly as an economist (6). The ‘Kategorien’ essay became the conceptual basis for Economy and Society, which was planned as one volume in the encyclopedic handbook project Grundriß der Sozialökonomik (Compendium of SocioEconomics ). It is difficult to see how this essay can be detached from the primacy of economics in Weber’s thought and repositioned as the axial text in a turn to sociology. In what sense, therefore, can it be said that the course of his methodological thought represents such a turn? Guy Oakes Monmouth University Max Weber, Zur Logik und Methodik der Sozialwissenschaften. Schriften 1900–1907, edited by Gerhard Wagner with the assistance of Claudius Härpfer, Tom Kaden, Kai Müller and Angelika Zahn (Max Weber Gesamtausgabe I/7; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), xv + 774pp. (hbk). ISBN 9-783-16153-774-5. €349.00. For various—unrelated—reasons, the publication of some of the most important volumes of the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe has been delayed almost to the end of the whole series: 2014 gave us the first version of Die protestantische Ethik und der ‘Geist’ des Kapitalismus (I/9), and 2016 the final one, coupled with the Die protestantischen Sekten und der Geist des Kapitalismus (I/18). And 2018 saw the publication of the whole bulk of Weber’s work on methodology: First came volume I/12, edited by Johannes Weiss, with Weber’s writings and interventions from 1908 to 1917 on ‘Verstehende Soziologie und Werturteilsfreiheit’, followed in November 2018 by volume I/7, with Weber’s essays on ‘Logik und Methodik der Sozialwissenschaften’ (1900–1907), edited by Gerhard Wagner—the book which is the subject of the present review. Volume I/7 is a highly important addition to the Weber corpus. First of all, it comprises the bulk of Weber’s published work in the field of methodology (in the narrower, ‘philosophical’ sense of the term); Book Reviews 269© Max Weber Studies 2019. and secondly, it marks, together with the ‘Protestant Ethic’, Weber’s return to scholarly writing after his deep depression around the turn of the century. But there is a further reason why I/7 is of particular interest: While all the major items in it are well known from Marianne Weber/Johannes Winckelmann’s Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre , an edition which has been with us for nearly a century, Gerhard Wagner has also included the transcribed text of a large number of notes written by Weber in Nervi on the Italian Riviera in late 1902 and early 1903. Technically, these notes are reproduced in an ‘Appendix’, but like the printed articles, they are provided with thorough textual and substantive annotations. The text of arguably the most important note, on Rickert’s ‘values’, and of a few others, had already been published, but the major part of the ‘Nervi notes’ included in this volume will be completely new to the reader, and Wagner’s decision to include them must be applauded. One should be clear, of course, about the limited source value of these notes. They reflect off-the-cuff ideas that came to Weber during his work, sometimes as reactions to texts that he had been reading. They never made it into print, but, as Wagner himself notes (623), they can be read as preparatory work for Weber’s printed essays, or as further elaborations of ideas launched in these essays. Even in cases where the notes seem to be written with a view to publication, their non-appearance in Weber’s printed work does not necessarily mean that he rejected them in substance. This is, I think...

Verstehende Soziologie und Werturteilsfreiheit. Schriften und Reden 1908-1917 by Max Weber (review)

[MWS 19.2 (2019) 260-280] ISSN 1470-8078 doi: 10.15543/maxweberstudies.19.2.260© Max Weber Studies 2019, Global Policy Institute, University House, Coventry University London, 109 Middlesex Street, London E1 7JF. Book Reviews Max Weber, Verstehende Soziologie und Werturteilsfreiheit. Schriften und Reden 1908–1917, edited by Johannes Weiß with the assistance of Sabine Frommer (Max Weber Gesamtausgabe I/12; Tϋbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), xv + 648pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-3-16150-296-5. €269.00. In 1981, Mohr Siebeck published a slight but dense prospectus that set a milestone in the history of scholarship on Max Weber. Reproduced in the thousands, the ‘green brochure’—with the famously severe and otherwise mysteriously expressionless photograph taken around 1917 of the great man on the cover—announced ambitious plans for a complete historical-critical edition of Weber’s work (MWG) and offered details on its conception, scope and structure, philological standards, and financing, as well as a timetable and editorial personnel for each of the volumes then projected. Two volumes were reserved for work conventionally called ‘Weber’s methodology’—an assortment of writings that explore a wealth of topics in the philosophy of science. Volume I/7, ’On the Logic and Methodology of the Cultural and Social Sciences 1900–1907’, was scheduled for publication in 1984; volume I/12, ‘On Methodology and the Controversy over Value Judgments in the Social Sciences 1908–1917’, for 1987. Both would fall under the editorial responsibility of Horst Baier. Some thirty-five years after the green brochure was circulated, both volumes have now appeared: I/7 in 2018, now with the title ‘On the Logic and Methods of the Social Sciences’ and edited by Gerhard Wagner together with several collaborators ; and I/12 in the same year, edited by Johannes Weiß in collaboration with Sabine Frommer and also with a new title: ‘Interpretive Sociology and Freedom from Value Judgments’. The original heroic plans for publishing these volumes were not only strikingly unrealistic but doomed, and for reasons that have no bearing at all on the qualifications or diligence of Horst Baier, a key progenitor of the MWG project and an original member of its editorial board.1 Years of 1. For a warm appreciation of Baier’s importance in the early planning of the edition, see Edith Hanke, Gangolf Hϋbinger and Wolfgang Schwentker, ‘The Genesis of the Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe and the Contribution of Wolfgang J. Mommsen’ Book Reviews 261© Max Weber Studies 2019. gestation and a substantial lapse between the conception and publication of both volumes were inevitable. Two considerations come into play here: the formidable intellectual and scholarly demands posed by Weber’s methodological writings and the standards for a historicalcritical edition on which the edition was grounded. Weber’s methodological writings are neither polished nor systematic , but occasional works of a highly heterogeneous nature. The scope and intensity of his confrontation with the publications of other authors is without parallel in the social sciences. In his texts written between 1900 and 1907 and published in MWG I/7, he analyzed the work of the economists Wilhelm Roscher and Karl Knies, the historian Eduard Meyer, and the jurist Rudolf Stammler. In these writings , Weber often discussed arguments of the economist Friedrich Gottl, the physiologist and probability theorist Johannes von Kries, the jurist Gustav Radbruch, the psychologist and philosopher Hugo Mϋnsterberg, the experimental psychologist and philosopher Wilhelm Wundt, the philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel, and the philosophers Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert, and Emil Lask. And there were others. For the contemporary scholar, even those with impressive chops in the field of Weber research, the result is overwhelming and virtually beyond comprehension. MWG I/12, which comprises texts written between 1908 and 1917, is a mélange of long, discursive monographs, shorter articles, papers and comments delivered at meetings of the Association for Social Welfare Policy (hereafter, the Association) and the German Sociological Society (hereafter, the GSS), review essays on books and conference proceedings , brief remarks on the possibility of resolving value conflicts on the basis of a formal ethic, an unfinished essay on Georg Simmel as a sociologist and theoretician of the monetary economy, and two sets of fragmentary excerpts from...

Max Weber’s Verstehende Soziologie

This is one of the final volumes in the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe and is entitled Verstehende Soziologie und Werturteilsfreiheit. It is ostensibly on Weber’s methodological writings but most of the contents appear to be rather minor pieces— a large number of conference comments, small contributions, and several book reviews. Yet, this is an important work because of those pieces as well as the two major essays on methodology: “Über einige Kategorien der verstehende Soziologie” (1913) and “Der Sinn der ‘Wertfreiheit’ der soziologischen und ökonomischen Wissenschaften” (1917), both of which were originally published in the journal Logos. As with all of Weber’s writings on methodology, these two essays are difficult to comprehend; yet, they are critical for grasping Weber’s sociology. The first one sets out Weber’s conception of “understanding” in history while the second explains why he believes his distinction between facts and values is critical for scholars. He suggests that we may not understand everything that occurred in history but we can understand enough; if we did not, then there would be no historical discipline. His words concerning the need for intellectual honesty are as important today as when he wrote them more than one hundred years ago. This book is a worthy companion to the forthcoming volume Zur Logik und Methodik der Sozialwissenschaften and is crucial for understanding Weber’s path to sociology. It is a worthy final addition to the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe. And, it is a worthy successor to the Gesammelte Schriften zur Wissensschaftslehre. For anyone hoping to understand how Weber became the famous sociologist, this book is necessary reading.

Various modes of the foundation for Sociology: Weber, Parsons, and Schutz

***Vários modos de fundamentação para a Sociologia: Weber, Parsons e Schutz***A fundamentação de verstehende Soziologie apresentada pelo próprio Max Weber foi suficiente para que ele pudesse lidar com seus problemas sociológicos concretos. Contudo, pareceu ser insuficiente para Alfred Schutz assim como para Talcott Parsons, a despeito do reconhecimento de ambos em relação às ideias de Weber sobre essa sociologia enquanto tal. Schutz criticou que Weber pouco esclareceu sobre os fundamentos de seus conceitos mais importantes, enquanto Parsons criticou a tendência de Weber “de obscurecer o papel essencialmente não-ficcional do sistema de teoria generalizado”. O que significa a diferença entre eles? Esse artigo tenta dar uma resposta a esta questão comparando Weber e Parsons, Weber e Schutz e Schutz e Parsons, concentrando-se sobretudo nos conceitos de “Verstehen” (compreensão), “ação” e “significado subjetivo”. Com essa análise comparativa espera-se jogar luzes sobre contribuições da fenomenologia para a sociologia.

Sociological Knowledge of the Other: Wolff’s “Surrender and Catch” Methodology

From a sociological perspective the “surrender and catch” expression derives, of course, from the experiential and existential basis of Wolff’s epistemology and hermeneutics.“Surrender” is connected with phenomenology, and Husserl’s (as well as Schutz’s) writings, besides Scheler’s idea of a “relatively natural world view”.“Surrender and catch” is also a “sociology of understanding” a definition which recuperates the German verstehende Soziologie though it makes a distinction between “surrender” and “surrender to”. It is not just a theory, it is a methodology too, in order to understand the otherness.Wolff was a multi-facetted scholar and this affected his conceptualizations. Furthermore, his surrender is something one experiences existentially in a number of fields, from the nature of empirical research to the art of theoretical reflection, from politics to poetry, from philosophy to history to sociology.It must also be pointed out that surrender and catch are a form of protest against the status quo.

Max Weber's Theory of Modernity: The Endless Pursuit of Meaning by Michael Symonds (review)

Book Reviews 259© Max Weber Studies 2016. United States, and opens a broader agenda for historical research about continuities and discontinuities in political thought and the traffic of political ideas across long distances in the twentieth century. Hubertus Buchstein Greifswald University Michael Symonds, Max Weber’s Theory of Modernity: The Endless Pursuit of Meaning (Surrey: Ashgate, 2015), x + 193pp. (hbk). ISBN 978-1-4724-6286-2. £60.00. If the meaning of meaning can only be deciphered within particular contexts of meaning, then all interpretation seems to be caught in an aporia, a web, or a paradox. Interpretation (in the sense of either Deutung or Verstehen in German) encounters the problem of how and within which contexts literal meaning can be distinguished from figurative connotation, and how each is different from meaning in the sense of significance or importance. Max Weber grappled with this hermeneutic problem throughout his career, but nowhere more directly and explicitly than in the opening pages of the book he was working on in his final days, Economy and Society. There he defines the focus of sociology as ‘subjectively intended meaning which is either…actually existing… [or] conceived as a pure conceptual type’.1 Where ideal typical meaning is the specialist domain of the sociologist , actually existing meaning encompasses the larger world of experience and common sense, the world that is the object of sociological interpretation and explanation. Michael Symonds’s book does not directly address the methodological premises of Weber’s version of interpretive sociology (verstehende Soziologie), but rather makes a broader and bolder claim that Weber’s theory of modernity hinges on ultimate questions of the meaning of life, death, and suffering. Despite the secular and rationalistic character of modern life, these are also the questions that motivate religious belief systems and underlie traditional worldviews . Taking Weber’s Economic Ethics of the World Religions as his primary frame and focus, in particular the ‘Intermediate Reflection ’ (a title Gerth and Mills misleadingly translated as ‘The Social 1. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 4; translation modified. 260 Max Weber Studies© Max Weber Studies 2016. Psychology of the World Religions’), Symonds’s study ranges across Weber’s writings in search of those moments where themes related to the will to meaning and significance are most pronounced. He argues that ‘the very idea of a meaningful cosmos becomes nonsensical and irrational’ within modernity, and yet ‘there is meaning within meaninglessness’, and therefore perpetual motivation for the endless pursuit of meaning (33, 9). The modern world is unprecedented for the way it turns meaninglessness itself into the driving force of individual and social life, even when some ultimate meaning is attached to death and suffering. The first of the book’s three main parts develops this reading of Weber’s concern with the fateful loss of meaning within modern life as a paradox, that is, as a way of understanding something that is beyond belief or contrary to opinion. The meaning of death turns on the question of how life is conducted in the everyday world (28). The Protestants pushed this question to the limit by interpreting the meaning of worldly work as itself based on a divine and ultimately unfathomable command: ‘The very idea that we are forced to work in the calling both puts forward the idea of meaning and withdraws it at the same time’ (52). Lacking of a coherent system for deciphering the signs of God’s plan and for assigning worth to each of life’s details, the form of modern experience inaugurated with the Protestant Reformation broke into multiple fragments and lost its unifying sense and direction: ‘Meaning works in modernity…as a set of competing valuespheres in the shadow of cosmic meaninglessness’ (91). What Weber expresses allegorically in ‘Politics as a Vocation’ as the polytheism of values is an ironic way of characterizing the godless existence of modern life where death itself has no definitive meaning or purpose. Symonds’s most interesting argument concerns how Weber addresses this general paradox in the ‘Intermediate Reflection’ and other later writings, such as ‘Science as a Vocation...

Weber's sociology—‘verstehend’ or ‘deutend’?

When translating Max Weber's methodological writings, I had to consider the (de)merits of the ‘received’ translation of ‘verstehende Soziologie’ as ‘interpretive sociology’; and this led me to the present, detailed study of Weber's discussion and use of the terms ‘Verstehen’ and ‘Deuten’. I conclude that, although, in Weber's work, ‘Verstehen’ and ‘Deuten’ form a sort of methodological amalgam, ‘Deuten’ typically indicates a necessary process having ‘Verstehen’ as its result. The examination of Weber's use of the two terms also raises doubts as to the implications of the subcategory of ‘aktuelles Verstehen’ discussed in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Finally, it emerges that Weber himself was far from consistent in his use of ‘Verstehen’ and ‘Deuten’. Against this background, ‘interpretive sociology’ seems to be a perfectly acceptable translation of what Weber meant by ‘verstehende Soziologie’, and one may even feel that regrettable misunderstandings might have been avoided if Weber himself had chosen to describe his sociology as ‘deutend’ rather than as ‘verstehend’.

On Wolfgang Schluchter's Interpretation of Weber

The article gives critical consideration to Schluchter's interpretation of Weber, and in particular to his account of the development of Western rationalism. Schluchter's interpretation, it is here maintained, has neglected to pay attention to those aspects of formal and material irrationality of modern capitalism, on which Weber has laid stress. Functionalist investigations, moreover, are only preliminary to a verstehende Soziologie. They are incompatible with a Weberian epistemology of the social sciences to the extent that they do not pursue any understanding and explaining of meaningful individual actions; and they fail to recognize that for Weber social change is a consequence of a plurality of contextual causes. As is the case of evolutionary theorizing in general, moreover, Schluchter's account of social change fails to heed Weber's recommendation that sociological descriptions and explanations should clearly indicate the relevant social actors and causal factors.

La sociología latinoamericana : un testimonio epistemológico

This essay is part of the spirit of the "Verstehende Soziologie" instilled by Max Weber. Such spirit is marked by the guiding idea that it is not possible or legitimate to arrive at any knowledge or judgment about a certain social reality without first being interested in the perceptions and judgments of the people involved in this reality. It is therefore not possible to form an image of the reality of Latin American underdevelopment, without first forming an image of the image that the allegedly "underdeveloped" man has of his own reality. The truth is that today developing countries are facing a qualitatively different problem from that faced by Western countries. But even so, foreign social scientists are not yet sufficiently aware that it is possible to arrive at a responsible judgment about this world without going into the way of thinking of its people.

A Continuing Dialogue with Alfred Schutz

Let me begin by describing my encounter and connection with the work of Alfred Schutz.1 1 discovered his work during the preparation for my master's thesis on Max Weber's verstehende Soziologie, submitted to the Graduate School of Waseda University in 1976. Before then, the name of Alfred Schutz had not found a place in my memory. Until 1976, there was just a little Japanese paper on Schutz (cf. Website of the Schutz Archives in Waseda University. http://www.waseda.jp/Schutz). When I discovered the first edition of his masterpiece, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (Schutz 1932), in our University library, I took it out, read it as carefully as possible, and realized that it was very important and relevant to my research project for a master's thesis. I could not, however, deal with it at that time, because Schutz's studies in this book, especially in its Chapter 2, were so fundamental, elaborate, and ingenious that I had no confidence that I could treat them sufficiently. Entering a doctoral course in 1976, 1 asked my mentor, Professor Yoshiyuki Sato, to take up Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt as a text for our seminar. He was kind enough to accept my proposal. We read it passage by passage, giving our careful attention even to conjunctions and adverbs; then translated it into Japanese sentence-by-sentence, and discussed Schutz' s analysis in detail. Running parallel with this work, I embarked on reading his Collected Papers, Reflections on the

Pierre Bourdieu on the Verstehende Soziologie of Max Weber

AbstractPierre Bourdieu was influenced by and critical of the work of Max Weber. In articles written in the early 1970's on Weber's analysis of prophets and priests in ancient Judaism, Bourdieu questioned key elements of Weber's verstehende soziologie including his predecessor's privileging of the conceptual over the non-conceptual in the understanding of human behavior and utilization of the ideal type "charisma." Bourdieu, at the same time, extended Weber's work on religious specialists and the evolution of the religious field in the West. In closing, I compare Bourdieu's advice to the Weberian sociologist of religion with that offered by Mary Douglas and Jon Elster.

Classical sociology and cosmopolitanism: a critical defence of the social

It is frequently argued that classical sociology, if not sociology as a whole, cannot provide any significant insight into globalization, primarily because its assumptions about the nation-state, national cultures and national societies are no longer relevant to a global world. Sociology cannot consequently contribute to a normative debate about cosmopolitanism, which invites us to consider loyalties and identities that reach beyond the nation-state. My argument considers four principal topics. First, I defend the classical legacy by arguing that classical sociology involved the study of 'the social' not national societies. This argument is illustration by reference to Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons. Secondly, Durkheim specifically developed the notion of a cosmopolitan sociology to challenge the nationalist assumptions of his day. Thirdly, I attempt to develop a critical version of Max Weber's verstehende soziologie to consider the conditions for critical recognition theory in sociology as a necessary precondition of cosmopolitanism. Finally, I consider the limitations of some contemporary versions of global sociology in the example of 'flexible citizenship' to provide an empirical case study of the limitations of globalization processes and 'sociology beyond society'. While many institutions have become global, some cannot make this transition. Hence, we should consider the limitations on as well as the opportunities for cosmopolitan sociology.

The Talking Disease: Hilda Bruch and Anorexia Nervosa

In this note on anorexia nervosa, it is assumed that the sociology of health and illness must adopt a three-level model of explanation. We have to understand the phenomenology of illness within the world of the patient. The problem with 'positivistic' approaches (based upon a medical model) is that they examine the condition independently of its constitution by a knowledgeable agent. Anorexia is not just a question of having anorexia; it is fundamentally about being anorexic. Secondly, there is the sociology of illness behaviour which examines the sick role. Finally, there is a political economy of health which is broadly concerned with the distribution of resources (including health) in a society. It can also be argued that a'condition' as complex as anorexia requires a multidisciplinary perspective to understand the various levels in which this disorder can be conceptualised in terms of its various social and cultural mean ings. Existing approaches to anorexia are typically under developed because they adopt uncritically an unidimensional view of the etiology of anorexia behaviour. Hilda Bruch's clinical work is important in this context as a multi-discipli nary interpretative approach. As a supplementary theoretical strategy, this note extends the therapeutic insights of Bruch by considering anorexia in terms of a phenomenology of the mouth as a 'talking disease' about familial interaction in societies which place an emphasis on individual competition. Being sick involves a special type of linguistic membership through socialisation in a sick role. The understanding of the meaning of sickness in medical practice can be seen consequently as a version of the methodology of verstehende soziologie.

Oakes on Weber and Rickert

In recent years a new trend in American sociology has become noticeable in the secondary literature on Max Weber. Both the erosion of the positivist paradigm of science and the subsequent search for feasible alternatives have led to changes in the interpretation of classical sociological literature. With regard to Max Weber's methodological writings the change of approach and method has primarily resulted in the formulation of a decidedly antipositivistic reading of the Gesammelte Aufs?tze zur Wissenschaftslehre. Although the pre? vious history of the discourse on Weber's methodology had been characterized by a high degree of heterogeneity of perspectives, most of the authors had followed Parsons's landmark interpretation. They had understood Weber's analysis primarily as a manifestation of a concept of science oriented toward contemporary natural sciences. Their main interest had been to systematically apply both Weber's concept of value neutrality and his typological approach to precisely this concept of science. In recent years, however, the antinaturalistic concepts of his verstehende Soziologie have received emphasis. The ideal type, understanding, and other methodological instruments are no longer seen as modifications of an otherwise undoubtedly valid mode of explanation. On the contrary, the aforementioned concepts are now placed within that historical context at the foundation of Weber's Wissenschaftslehre. Thus, the philosophical approaches and methods of Wilhelminian Germany have gained greater attention. They provide the es? sential backdrop for any adequate exploration of the origin and development of Weber's methodology. Professor Oakes?whose authoritative perspective on German academic culture rests not only on his translations of Georg Simmel, Max Weber, Hein? rich Rickert, Wilhelm Windelband, and Carl Schmitt?has now tackled this very problem. In his efforts at reconstructing Weber's methodological founda? tions, Oakes' interest clearly goes beyond mere historical investigation: "Some three generations after their original conception, the positions developed in

Weber and Interpretive Sociology in America

This article examines the role of Weber's methodological writings on verstehende Soziologie in the construction of an American variant of interpretive sociology during the first half of the twentie...

Dilthey's Distinction Between "Explanation" and '"Understanding" and the Possibility of Its "Mediation"

Dilthey's Distinction Between "Explanation" and '"Understanding" and the Possibility of Its "Mediation" KARL-OTTO APEL 1. EXPOSITION OF THE THESIS MAX WEBER, THE FOUNDER of "interpretive sociology" (verstehende Soziologie), was influenced by Dilthey and the Neo-Kantians when he framed the question of "interpretive explanations" (verstehendeErkli~rungen).It was in this context that he wrote: "That an interpretation possesses a particularly high degree of evidence [i.e., qualitatively for understanding], does not itself prove anything about its empirical validity.... Rather, our 'understanding' of the context must always be checked by the usual methods of causal correlations as far as possible, before an ever so 'evident' interpretation becomes a valid 'understandable explanation.' " To this degree Weber denies "that 'understanding' and 'explanation' have no [positive] relationship to one another, although they most certainly begin at opposite poles in their work. ''2 Such statements by Max Weber are often used in systematic evaluations as arguments against Dilthey's distinction between the "understanding" typical of the human sciences and the kind of "explanation" typical of the natural sciences. In this way, e.g., Weber's demand for a way to check the evidence of claims based upon "understanding" by means of the "usual methods of causal correlations" has even been seen as a prefiguration of Hempel's argument for the "unity of science" model of nomological causal explanations or, to be more precise, of strong, deterministic and weak, statistical causal explanation. 1 See Max Weber, GesammelteAufsi~tzezur Wissenschaftstheorie(Ttibingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], x968), 428. " Ibid., 436. [131] 132 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY In fact, Hempel attributed to "empathetic understanding," as he called it, mere psychological and heuristic significance, even for historical and social sciences, in the discovery of historically testable, explanatory hypotheses. He emphasized especially that the evidence for the discovery of understandable reasons for behavior does not yet indicate that the factual occurrence of this kind of behavior can be explained. For this we need to be able to show that these "reasons" actually were causally effective. But to show this on Hempel's account we must already engage in checking a nomological explanatory hypothesis by empirical means. 3 According to this line of thought, the possible mediation of explanation and understanding, as it is already formulated in Max Weber's concept of "understanding explanation," amounts to showing that Dilthey's distinction between the two is irrelevant to the philosophy of science. Dilthey's distinction would amount then merely to a kind of ideologically destructive separation , as is sometimes claimed, even a tearing apart of the natural and the so-called "human sciences" (Geisteswissenschaften), a separation which can be traced in part to metaphysical prejudices, in part to a psychological confusion in nineteenth-century philosophy. In contrast to this interpretation, I want to uphold the following thesis. In the human and social sciences there are different types of mediation between 'understanding' and 'explanation'. The philosophical-epistemological conception of these different types of mediation does not stand in contradiction to the proper understanding of Dilthey's distinction, rather presupposes it. To my mind, this distinction and its mediation is not only psychologically relevant, but relevant methodologically as well, and, hence, relevant to the philosophy of science too. Of course, neither--the distinction and its mediation---can be made understandable under the assumptions of an abstract "logic of science." By such a logic I mean the method of explicating "explanations" as "systematizations of knowledge" (C. G. Hempel); it abstracts from the outset from the pragmatic presuppositions of explanations which answer particular questions, or it at best regards these pragmatic presuppositions as external, empirical conditions of scientific knowledge. In opposition to this view, we can, in my view, adequately explicate both the distinction between explanation and understanding as well as the types of mediations between them only by means of a transcendental-pragmatic epistemology and philosophy of science. By this I mean a transformation of Kant's approach, in the following sense. See C. G. Hempel,Aspectsof ScientificExplanationand otherEssaysin thePhilosophyof Science (NewYork:The FreePress, x965),239f., 258. EXPLANATION AND UNDERSTANDING 133 The abstract logic of science promulgated by Logical Positivism completely overlooked the categorical conditions of the possibility of synthetic...

Max Weber's methodological strategy and comparative lifeworld phenomenology

Max Weber took his position in the Methodenstreit of his day largely in a polemic against what he regarded as invalid methodologies of psychological reductionism, social organizism, evolutionism, and both idealist and materialist teleologies. Because he was far more interested in empirical studies, Weber never developed his own position in any comprehensive and formal treatment. It was Alfred Schutz who sought to provide this "underlaborer" philosophy for verstehende Soziologie, grounding an examination of subjective meaning in the lifeworld?the world of everyday activity?and in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Yet Schutz never really used his methodological critique as a basis of substantive investigation. Thus, there has been a hiatus between the interpretive sociology of Weber and the sociological implications of the analysis of the lifeworld developed by Schutz. What I term "comparative lifeworld phenomenology" is proposed here as a methodological strategy which parallels Weber's investigative strategy, at the same time that it draws on Schutz's insights regarding the nature of meaning and the structures of the lifeworld. In the same way that Schutz's critique demonstrates the philosophical basis of verstehende Soziologie, it is proposed here that comparative lifeworld phenomenology can be used to enrich and clarify the method of substantive analysis of a verstehende Soziologie.

A Study of “Verstehende Soziologie” in Max Weber

As everybody knows, Max Weber had a certain conception : he had regarded his cognitive standpoint as a sort of interpretive science. His “verstehende” historical sociology comes into existence upon the intersecting point of “Erkenntnis” and “Person”.There are two difficulties corresponding to these two perspectives of his theory. Ono problem is the equivocation of concept of “Verstehen”, which originates in his introducing the other concept of understanding, not only but so-called “understanding of motives”. The other problem is the confrontation of two kinds of view on “Person” in Weber : one is the view which regards “Person” as “dezisionistisch”, the other the view opposing it. Weber's historical sociology will never operate well, unless these two problems are solved.By investigating the first problem, the structure of his “Verstecen” will be clarified. The solution of the second problem brings us the apparatus by which “Verstehende” cognition will overcome the contradiction of the concept of “Person”.The consideration from these two angles throws light on the key concept of his “Verstehende Soziologie”, where the two perspectives of “Verstehende” cognition and “Person” cross each other : it makes clear the pivotal significance of “Hermeneutisches Verstehen” which he brought into his methodology-the mediating process between subject and object in “Wertbeziecung”.

Problems and Situation of Sociology in Postwar Japan

1. Comparing sociology in postwar Japan with that in prewar Japan, the following remarkable differences can be found:(1) The decline of the grand theory which was modeled after German Formal sociology, and the appearance of Parsonian ideas which resulted from the introduction of American functional theory.(2) A gradual decrease in groups carrying out actual reseach on the family and villages, and diversification of research into such themes as industry, city, stratification, labor, social pathology, mass communication etc., the utilization of the results of research and increasing preciseness in research method.(3) A revival of criticism of sociology by Marxists, backed up by more actual proof.2. From the standpoint of the main current of world sociological history, however, it can be said that the methodology of Formale=Verstehende Soziologie since Simmel=Weber is fundamentally confirmed both in America and in Japan. But to those who study modern Japanese society, as well as to Weber, the main problem about methodology exists in comparing the methodology of twentieth century sociology with that of the Marxists and applying properly each of them to the analysis of the present situation to find out “Principia media” (K. Mannheim) of Japanese society.3. In order to find out useful ways of applying both methodologies, it is necessary to provide precise concepts of each, especially to analyze the concept, “the situational prescription” (W. Thomas), and to deal with the personality element properly. At the same time we should carefully examine the interrelation between the economic theory of Uno, a Japanese Marxian economist, and sociological studies. Recently the strong tendency to revalue the religious Sociology of Weber has appeared and this shows the necessity of this.